relo: Kingman, AZ to Valentine

leaving Kingman

I was pushing the time limit in Kingman, and the weather was about to get Uncomfortably Hot (upper 80s F) for a few days.
Complicating matters is that after the few days of heat the daytime highs will drop into the 50s with overnight lows in the 20s. It is much easier to stay warm in a camper in cold weather (propane, electric blank) than cool it. But a hard freeze could damage my admittedly-minimal plumbing.¹

Since temps will drop again if I were on Day 1 of 14 in Kingman I would likely suck it up and endure the short-term heat. But since I was timed out that wasn’t an option. The overall plan is to head toward Flagstaff for the summer so the main options would be moving east on either I40 or on Route 66. Going too far toward Flagstaff would involve significant elevation rise and therefore more (and more-serious) overnight freezes

Valentine

Along the Route 66 is a decent chunk of BLM land at about the same elevation as Kingman, but averages a few degrees cooler for whatever reason. I drove along 66 to the BLM land and watched Verizon signal drop the T-mobile signal fade completely.

There are enough cattle here that there is a gate at the entrance. In accordance with the rule of thumb leave it how you find it I found it closed so I passed through then closed it behind me. There was a BLM sign and a sign-in booklet. I think the rangers must not be hovering because the logbook is full and campers have been adding their own loose leaf so they could sign in. The land out there is checkerboard (BLM language) private/public so I used the US Public Lands app to verify the selected spot was on BLM land.

Seeing 1-2 bars of Verizon so I likely won’t be updating much from out here. Took a few minutes to upload the pic thumbnailed above. I’m using my bandwidth tricks (mosh+tmux) to deal with intermittence but it’s still a bit like pulling teeth. I’ve turned off images in the browser to let me do light browsing. I have two online things I need to renew (vehicle registration and ham license); we’ll see how well that goes.

The beauty of this place doesn’t show up well in the pic; the mountains in the distance are big and dramatic. To the east it’s slightly different geology but perhaps more dramatic. There are enough (juniper? pinyon) out there to throw usable shade for the hot days to come, while being low enough not to block my high-mounted solar.

comments

twitter comment thread for this post

1. tank to water pump, water pump to sink sprayer ↩